


fight me

by QuidProCrow



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Multi, honestly not much else happens here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 21:23:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11677344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuidProCrow/pseuds/QuidProCrow
Summary: No one has reasonable conversations at one in the morning. Lemony Snicket is proof of this; Beatrice just wants to go to sleep; Bertrand is a horribly affectionate enabler.





	fight me

Lemony talks, because he apparently doesn't _sleep_ like a normal human being. It should be dark and quiet and peaceful at one in the morning, but it isn't, because Lemony Snicket talks after sex and all Beatrice wants to do is sleep. (She doesn't even know what Bertrand does. Stare at the ceiling and smile? Beatrice has never bothered to check because _she is trying to sleep, thank you very much_.) 

"Do you think," he's saying, somewhere near Beatrice's elbow, jolting her out of the three minutes of sleep she managed to get between this and the last monologue, "that if one were to try and explain the feeling one gets when one is home alone, which might be something like biting into your favorite cream-filled chocolate only to find out there is no cream this time, in order to compare it with—”

"Oh my god," Beatrice says. She rolls over and jams her face into the pillow. "You need to shut up. I love you but you need to shut up."

"I didn't quite catch that, Beatrice," Lemony says, and damn him, he sounds like he's smiling. 

Beatrice lets out a noise that she thinks would be a lot more threatening if her face wasn't in a pillow, but she's not very keen on moving at the moment. "I will fight you, Lemony Snicket." 

"I wonder who would win," Lemony says thoughtfully, and Beatrice will kill him, really. 

"Beatrice, probably," comes Bertrand's voice from the other side of the bed, and then he _turns on the damn lamp._

"Don't encourage him," Beatrice says, shoving her face further into the pillow. "Do _not_ encourage him, Bertrand."

"I mean," Bertrand says, and the mattress shifts when he sits up, "Beatrice fights dirty, so I don't think Lemony has much of a chance. But then again, Lemony has a considerable amount of upper arm strength from carrying an accordion, so if he could successfully throw at least one punch—"

"Oh, _please_ ," Beatrice says. "I could take him! Arms or not!" 

"When I think about it, though," Lemony says, "I probably wouldn't be able to go through with it." 

"Fight me, dammit!" Beatrice shouts, pounding her fist on the mattress. "Prove your worth, Snicket!" 

"However," Lemony says, "for the sake of speaking hypothetically, if it came down to hand-to-hand combat, I'd probably lose. But if we were, say, fencing—"

"You would win," Bertrand says. 

"Are you _saying_ ," Beatrice says, finally pulling her face out of the pillow and looking up to stare at Bertrand, hoping she looks reasonably incredulous, "that even though I taught Lemony how to fence he'd still beat me? Bertrand, I never knew you could betray me." 

Bertrand reaches over and brushes a strand of hair out of Beatrice’s face. 

“Don’t be cute,” Beatrice mutters. “I am thoroughly shocked.”

“You taught him to fence well,” Bertrand said, and Lemony glows between them. 

“Fine,” Beatrice says, and she sits up, resting her elbows on her knees and looking at the two of them. “So, I win in hand-to-hand, and, alright, I’ll concede Lemony wins at fencing. But Lemony, if you fought Bertrand, who do you think would win?”

“Who do _you_ think would win?” Bertrand asks her. 

“Lemony,” Beatrice says immediately. “I’ve seen Lemony barge into a room brandishing an accordion and incapacitate at least one person. He’d win.”

“Where was I when that happened?” Bertrand says, raising an eyebrow.

Lemony frowns. “You may have actually been the one I incapacitated,” he says. “I really did barge into the room without considering the consequences or who was in there. I am sorry about that.”

“All is forgiven,” Bertrand says. He takes Lemony’s hand and presses a kiss to his knuckles, and Beatrice is momentarily distracted by the small smile on Lemony’s face. It does awfully nice things to her chest. 

“Okay, so that one’s settled,” Beatrice says, giving herself a shake. “Now, you and me, Bertrand.” 

“You’re surprisingly into this for being irritated that I woke you up,” Lemony comments.

“I’m learning to pick my battles,” Beatrice says. “Like I’m doing right now. Come on, Bertrand.” 

“I think Beatrice would win,” Lemony says, finally sitting up. “Like you said, she fights with a certain tendency to bend the rules—”

“That was one time!” Beatrice exclaims. 

Lemony raises his eyebrow, and Bertrand’s expression verges on severely skeptical.

“Okay, twice,” Beatrice says. Her shoulders slouch a little. “But Olaf had it coming—”

“Whereas you, Bertrand,” Lemony continues, “have a very definite form, which means you two might actually be evenly matched.” 

“Alright, so, hand-to-hand, fine,” Beatrice says, trying not to glower too hard at the amused smile on Bertrand’s face. “I’d win if we fenced, though.”

“Have we explored all possible fight options, do you think?” Bertrand says, and there is a gleam in his eyes now that Beatrice likes. 

Lemony hums in thought. “What are we considering a fight, and what are we considering a weapon?”

“Anything,” Beatrice says delightedly. “Any situation where you’ve got at least two people, and anything you can say or get your hands on.” 

“We may need to keep track of this,” Lemony says, and he clambers over Beatrice to grab her notebook from the nightstand. 

They take the next hour and a half to write down every single possible fight scenario, which ranges from considering how lethal a pen could really be (“Have you _seen_ Geraldine,” Lemony says, looking horrified), which fruit is the most dangerous (“Watermelons,” Bertrand says, nodding), to formal wear (“Are you telling me I couldn’t kill a man in my heels?” Beatrice says. “I’m saying I’d rather you didn’t,” Bertrand says.) 

It’s two-thirty when Bertrand starts yawning, two forty-five when Lemony rubs at his eyes, three in the morning when Beatrice slouches against Lemony’s shoulder. It’s not long after that when all of them sink back against the pillows and Beatrice takes her notebook back and tosses it onto the nightstand. Lemony has a hand in her hair and an arm around Bertrand, Beatrice has an arm draped over his chest, Bertrand is sound asleep against Lemony, his hand on top of Beatrice’s. 

“You know,” Lemony begins. 

Beatrice has had enough of this. “Why do you do this,” she says to Lemony’s shoulder. “Why are you so _wordy_ tonight.” 

Lemony is quiet for so long Beatrice thinks she might just drift off before he answers. But then he does. 

“I missed you two,” is what he says. 

Beatrice forces her eyes open and tilts her head up to look at him, at the little pinch between his eyebrows. It’s not like she forgets. It’s not like she can ever forget, really, what they do. It just feels easier when both of them are there, so much that she _almost_ forgets the space in her apartment when Lemony isn’t there, the silence when Bertrand isn’t, because those things are filled by the safety in Lemony’s arms and the openness of Bertrand’s. 

They’re all in this room tonight when none of them were last night. She had missed them so much. Like an ache in her chest, one skirting just close to the edge of a worry that it’d never go away again. She gets it. 

Beatrice kisses the side of his jaw. “Missed you too,” she says. She kisses the side of his face. “Missed you with everything I have.” Then she climbs over him, ignoring Lemony’s _mmph_ when she jabs an elbow into his stomach, and kisses Bertrand’s shoulder. “Missed you too, Bertrand. Horrible betrayer that you are.” 

“Are you two having a serious conversation without me?” Bertrand mumbles.

Lemony laughs, soft and quiet, and he reaches over and turns off the light.

**Author's Note:**

> consider this happening sometime afterwards –  
> “beatrice,” ramona says, “why does your commonplace book have a list of—what is this, even? you’ve got ‘lemony’s rhetorical skills’ next to ‘bertrand’s shoes’—”
> 
> “NO REASON,” beatrice exclaims, “NO REASON AT ALL, RAMONA, GIVE IT BACK.” 
> 
>  
> 
> come find me on [tumblrrrr](http://whoslaurapalmer.tumblr.com/)


End file.
